PRODUCTHEAD: Coding in the open
» A common misconception is that openly sharing code presents security risks
» Keeping code open clarifies ownership and can avoid vendor lock-in
Author: Jock Busuttil
Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals.
In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS).
Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK.
He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.
PRODUCTHEAD: What is a product? What is a service?
» Services are best identified as verbs rather than nouns
» You cannot have services without products, nor products without services
» A service is something that helps someone to do something
The power of open: lessons from UK government, hosted by Product People
4 valuable product and culture lessons from the UK’s government digital teams. This was a talk I gave for Product People in September 2024.
PRODUCTHEAD: Deconstructing Duolingo’s growth
» Dissect your monolithic metrics to drive growth in more easily influenced segments
» Don’t kill the golden goose of growth by oversaturating a channel
» If growth is your goal, have a sense of urgency
PRODUCTHEAD: Trust in photos is dead and gone
» Sarah Jeong on why the Pixel 9’s Reimagine feature is the final nail in the coffin for trust in photos
» 9 Sept: I’m giving a talk for Product People on lessons about org culture
PRODUCTHEAD: When Sales ask for stuff
» Knowing what kinds of customer you want and don’t want help you to prioritise ‘one-off’ feature requests from sales
» “Enterprise customers look at our roadmaps as the starting point for negotiations”
» Are feature requests a deliberate strategy or a reactive wild goose chase?
PRODUCTHEAD: Wicked problems
» The uncertainty of a problem should influence how we respond to it
» Misdiagnosis of a problem can compound it
» We frame our solutions through the lens of our social predisposition
» Wicked problems can only be addressed by collaboration between different social types
PRODUCTHEAD: Spheres of influence and buy-in
» The only thing you can truly control in life is yourself
» Securing buy-in is meaningless if you let people go back on their agreement without challenge
PRODUCTHEAD: Context changes everything
» At C-level, focus more on “what’s in it for you” and less on “here’s what I need”
» Get your strategy, priorities, risk-taking heuristics, and goals straight, and treat allocation as a hypothesis
Jen is forced to be painfully truthful at a job interview in the TV series, Extraordinary (Credit: Disney)
93: What to expect from your face-to-face product manager interview
Your product manager interview is as much about you getting to know your interviewers as it is the other way around. Here’s what you can expect along with my tips for standing out from the crowd.
